Nathaniel Hawthorne
Young Goodman Brown
Young Goodman Brown: Setting
• Time: Sunset
• Place: Salem village
• Weather conditions: Windy
• Social conditions: See notes on historical
context
• Mood: Darkness and gloom
Character: Faith Brown
1. Characteristics: Sweet, cheerful, religious
2. Developing character: She goes from good to
corrupted.
Character: Young Goodman Brown
1. Characteristics: Confident, religious
2. Developing character: He goes from being
confident in his ability to choose good rather
than evil, but once he stands before the Devil’s
altar, he can no longer believe that good always
prevails. He becomes a profoundly disillusioned
man who sees wickedness everywhere,
including in those closest to him.
Character: The Devil
1. Characteristics: Older man physically
resembling Young Goodman Brown in some
ways
2. Developing character: The reader comes to see
him as the darker side of Young Goodman
Brown’s character.
Character: Goody Cloyse, the Minister, Deacon Gookin
1.
Characteristics: Pious, virtuous at story’s beginning;
hypocritical at story’s end
2. Developing characters: All three of these characters serve
as dramatic examples of the wickedness and hypocrisy
that may hide in the souls of those who appear most
virtuous. These three are distinguished from among the
crowd of townsfolk at the gathering because they
represent a standard of piety and godliness that is
destroyed for Brown by his experience. Both Goody
Cloyse and Deacon Gookin were real people who were
involved in the Salem Witch Trials of 1692.
Young Goodman Brown: Plot
"Young Goodman Brown" opens with Young
Goodman Brown about to embark on an
evening's journey. His young wife, Faith, fearful
for some unknown reason, beseeches him to
delay his journey. Goodman Brown, however,
stresses that he has a task that must be
accomplished before sunrise, and so the
newlyweds reluctantly part. As he walks down the
street, Goodman Brown chides himself for
leaving Faith while he goes on his journey and
resolves that, after this night, he will stay by the
side of his good and pious wife. Pleased with
himself, Goodman Brown then hurries through
the forest to accomplish some unknown task.
Plot (cont.)
Deeper in the forest Goodman Brown spies an
old man, who is actually the Devil in disguise,
waiting for him. Goodman Brown blames Faith
for making him late. The older man, who has a
curious resemblance to Goodman Brown, carries
a staff which resembles a black snake. When the
older man urges Goodman Brown to take the
staff to ease his walk, Goodman Brown expresses
second thoughts and his intention to go home.
The older man convinces Goodman Brown to
walk with him, however, and listen to the reasons
why he should continue. Goodman Brown agrees
and murmurs that his forefathers, good honest
Christians, would never go on such a walk.
Plot (cont.)
To his surprise, Brown finds this is not true. His
companion tells him that he is well acquainted with
the Brown family and that he helped Brown's father
and grandfather commit acts such as the punishment
of religious dissenters and the massacre of Indians.
While Goodman Brown expresses surprise, his
companion continues to speak of the good Christians
of New England with whom he is acquainted:
deacons, town leaders, even the governor. Goodman
Brown is amazed but tells his companion that were he
to continue on this journey, he still would not be able
to meet the eye of his minister. Hearing this, the older
man breaks into a fit of laughter.
Plot (cont.)
The two men then see Goody Cloyse, the old woman who serves as
Goodman Brown's moral adviser. Not wanting to explain who he is
with and where he is going, Goodman Brown hides in the woods.
Again, Goodman Brown is surprised; the woman knows his
companion, who has now taken on the appearance of Goodman
Brown's grandfather. The two older people talk of a witch's recipe and
the meeting that will take place this evening. Goodman Brown
realizes that Goody Cloyse is a witch.
The two men continue walking through the forest. At a hollow in
the road, Goodman Brown refuses to go any further, declaring he
would rather be on the side of Faith than Goody Cloyse. His
companion leaves him to think over the matter. Goodman Brown
realizes that his decision to stop will enable him to meet his minister
and deacon with a clear conscience. As he continues these comforting
meditations, a carriage passes by on the road. Two men, who reveal
themselves to be the minister and the deacon, speak of the evening's
meeting and the young woman who will be joining. After the carriage
has passed, Goodman Brown feels faint as he realizes that these men,
too, are in communion with the Devil. Now he questions whether or
not heaven really exists. Yet his love for Faith gives him the willpower
to resist going to the meeting.
Plot (cont.)
While he is lifting his hands to pray, however, he
hears Faith's voice. He calls out for her, and she
answers with a scream. He realizes that Faith is going
to the meeting, and he decides to attend the meeting
too because all good is now gone. Soon he reaches a
clearing with a crude altar surrounded by the "saints"
and "sinners" of Salem. While the Devil's
congregation sings an evil hymn rejoicing in sin,
Brown waits, hoping that he can find Faith. At a call
for the new members he steps forward, and Faith is
led forward by two women. A dark figure speaks of
sin. He commands the newlyweds to look at each
other and then declares that they now know virtue is
but a dream and evil is the nature of mankind.
Goodman Brown cries out to Faith to resist this evil.
Plot (cont.)
He never finds out, however, if Faith does resist. As
soon as the words are out of his mouth, Goodman
Brown finds himself alone in the forest. The next
morning he returns to Salem. Everywhere he goes he
sees people who attended the meeting, but he turns
away from them. He even turns from Faith.
Though Goodman Brown never finds out whether
or not he dreamed the meeting in the forest, the
experience still has a profound effect on him. After
that night, he becomes a stern, sad, and distrustful
man. He rejects the faith he once had in his religion
and even rejects his own wife. At his death, no hopeful
words are carved upon his tombstone. He has lived a
life of gloom, seeing sinners and blasphemers
everywhere he looked.
Young Goodman Brown: Point of view
Omniscient limited – The author tells the story
in third person. We know only what Young
Goodman Brown knows and what Hawthorne
allows him to tell us.
Young Goodman Brown: Conflict
Man vs. himself - The conflict that Brown suffers during
his journey in the woods is shown to be internal through
the number of details that are projections of his
unconscious. The devil’s arguments ―seemed rather to
spring from up in the bosom of his auditor‖ – that is,
Brown himself. When ―the echoes of the forest mocked
him,‖ Brown is projecting his emotional state onto the
forest.
The further Brown sinks into despair, the clearer it
becomes that what he sees and hears is to a large extent the
product of his fancy. ―Once [Brown] fancied that he could
distinguish the accents of townspeople of his own,‖ but ―the
next moment, so indistinct were the sounds, he doubted
whether he had heard aught‖ until ―then came a stronger
swell of those familiar tones.‖ Ultimately Brown himself is
the ―chief horror of the scene‖ created by his own mind in
conflict
Foreshadowing
When Young Goodman Brown leaves Faith in
the beginning, she says to him, ―Pray tarry with
me this night, dear husband, of all nights in the
year.‖ It is obvious later that Faith knows that
something is going on and she does not want
her husband out in it.
Young Goodman Brown: Theme
1. Guilt vs. innocence - the inexperienced young man
ever has. Early in the story, Brown says: "after this one
night I'll cling to [Faith's] skirts and follow her to
heaven." He believes Faith is an "angel" and one of the
Puritan elect who is destined for heaven.
Unfortunately, Brown's experience in the forest makes
him reject his previous conviction of the prevailing power
of good. He instead embraces the Devil's claim—"Evil is
the nature of mankind"— by crying out ''Come, devil: for
to thee is this world given." This acknowledgment, fueled
by the discovery of hypocrisy in the catechist, clergy, the
magistrates of Salem, and his own wife, destroys Brown's
faith in the Puritan elect. It also sets the tone for the rest
of his life. Critics often view this outcome as an attack by
Hawthorne on the "unredemptive" nature of the Puritan
belief system, which holds that people are evil by nature
because of original sin.
Theme (cont.)
2. Alienation vs. community - Though Brown
successfully rejects the Devil in his physical
form, he allows sin to reside within him when
he rejects his belief in humanity. "Often,
awakening suddenly at midnight, he shrank
from the bosom of Faith, and at morning or
eventide, when the family knelt down at prayer,
he scowled, and muttered to himself, and gazed
at his wife, and turned away." By turning away,
Brown becomes the symbolic representation of
Hawthorne’s belief in the isolation of the
human spirit. In Hawthorne’s own words, every
human being is alone ―in that saddest of
prisons, his own heart.‖
Theme (cont.)
3. Good vs. evil - In "Young Goodman Brown," Hawthorne
presents sin as an inescapable part of human nature. The
fact that Goodman Brown only has to make his journey into
the evil forest once suggests that the spiritual quest is a ritual
all humans must undergo at some point in their lives.
Brown, however, proves himself incapable of accepting this
part of the human condition and cannot move forward with
his life as a result.
Faith, on the other hand, makes a leap of love and faith to
welcome her husband back with open arms from his
inexplicable night away from home. Brown, however, "looks
sadly and sternly into her face and passes without greeting."
Whereas Faith is able to accept the inevitable fallen nature of
humanity and live prosperously with this realization, Brown
the absolutist cannot accept this truth, and remains stuck in
a state of suspicion and ill feelings. By portraying these two
reactions, Hawthorne makes a statement not only about the
black-and-white, Puritan view of good and evil, but how evil
can take other forms as well.
Young Goodman Brown: Symbolism
1. Forest: A place of temptation or evil
2. Faith Brown: Purity and religious faith
3. Young Goodman Brown: Naiveté, piety,
righteousness
4. Pink ribbon: Child-like innocence